Crime and Punishment (71 page)

5
.
is a woman a human being
: The craze for the natural sciences in the
1860
s was related to the prominence of the ‘Woman Question' (female emancipation, the relative status of women compared to men, the biology of women) as a bone of contention between the radical and conservative camps. Razumikhin's reference here is to G. Z. Yeliseyev's feuilleton ‘Diverse Opinions: Are Women Human? Opinions Ancient and Modern', published in
The Contemporary
in
1861
(
PSS
,
BT
).

6
.
the Radishchev of Geneva
: Alexander Radishchev (
1749–1802
), author of
A Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow
, critic of serfdom and autocracy and celebrated Siberian exile, was more ‘the Rousseau of Russia' than Jean-Jacques Rousseau (
1712–78
), Radishchev's elder, was ‘the Radishchev of Geneva', but the context of this inaccurate formulation is strictly commercial: an attempt to pitch a new title to the bookseller
Cherubimov. Rousseau had been praised by Nikolai Chernyshevsky (
1828–89
), Dostoyevsky's favourite intellectual target among the socialists, as a ‘revolutionary democrat' in an article of
1860
, and Rousseau's
Confessions
(
1781–8
) were republished in Russian translation in
1865
, when Dostoyevsky began writing this novel (
BT
,
PSS
).

7
.
the First Line
: Parallel streets (‘Lines') are a topographic feature of Vasilyevsky Island, where Razumikhin lives (and where the university is still located today). The Lines stretch from the south to the north of the Island, crossing the three main avenues going east to west.

8
.
Palace . . . cathedral's dome . . . chapel
: The sites mentioned in this passage are readily identifiable as the Winter Palace (home to the tsars and now to the Hermitage Museum), St Isaac's Cathedral off Nevsky Prospect, and a chapel named after Nicholas the Wonderworker on Nikolayevsky Bridge, which was St Petersburg's first permanent, cast-iron bridge over the Neva. The marble chapel was demolished in
1930
and the bridge rebuilt in
1936–
8
(
BT
,
SB
).

9
.
dumb, deaf spirit
: An allusion to an episode in Mark's Gospel. A father brings a possessed child to Jesus: ‘And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming. [...] When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.' (Mark
9
:
20
,
25–7
). The phrase ‘dumb and deaf spirit' is marked in quotation marks in an early draft of the novel (
BT
).

1
0
.
your blood yelling inside you
: A possible allusion to God's words to Cain: ‘What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground' (Genesis
4
:
10
). According to M. S. Altman, ‘Artless Nastasya uses the word “blood” in the popular understanding of “illness, fever” [...] but once again speech proves wiser than the speaker, and for Raskolnikov the words of this simple woman [...] are the accusatory voice of the common people' (
BT
).

1
1
.
Vrazumikhin
: Razumikhin's name – roughly, Mr Reasonable (
razum
: reason, intellect) – would have been a characteristic example of the often ironic names invented by teachers at religious seminaries in mid-nineteenth-century Russia and inspired by the qualities of their pupils (
BT
). The addition of the prefix ‘v', however, makes him sound, to a
Russian ear, like a man desperate to make others see reason, by whatever means necessary. See also Note on Names.

1
2
.
through the sugar lump
: The sugar lump was held in the teeth, thus saving sugar.

1
3
.
a stream of electricity
: A Russian dictionary of foreign words published in
1865
described electricity as a ‘weightless liquid, found in every organism on earth' (
BT
).

1
4
.
avenante-ish
:
Avenante
(French) means ‘comely'.

1
5
.
the countess
: Almost certainly an allusion to the greatest short story by Alexander Pushkin (
1799–1837
), ‘The Queen of Spades' (
1834
), described by Dostoyevsky as ‘the epitome of the art of the fantastic'. Pushkin's protagonist, Hermann, is determined to learn the three-card formula known only to the old countess Anna Fedotovna, who dies when he confronts her. Parallels and contrasts between Hermann and Raskolnikov are a staple of scholarly literature on
Crime and Punishment
.

1
6
.
Palmerston
: Typically used to refer to long, close-fitting men's coats, so named in honour of the English prime minister (
1855–65
). Various reasons have been given for Razumikhin's characteristically idiosyncratic usage of the term, one of the more convincing being that of Sergei Belov: ‘In the early
1860
s these coats started going out of fashion, which may be why Razumikhin calls Raskolnikov's decrepit hat a “Palmerston”' (
SB
).

1
7
.
Charmeur's
: E. F. Charmeur was one of the best and most expensive tailors in St Petersburg; Dostoyevsky himself, according to his second wife, Anna Grigoryevna, used to order suits from him (
BT
).

1
8
.
studied law
: The Russian word used here (
pravoved
) indicates that Porfiry studied at the highly prestigious Imperial College of Jurisprudence in St Petersburg, an institution founded in
1835
and open only to sons of the nobility. The course lasted six years. To judge by the reactions of early critics, such an education was unusual for a police investigator like Porfiry, adding to the complexity of his characterization (
BT
).

1
9
.
Ryazan
: See above, Part One, note
31
.

2
0
.
The Sands
: An area stretching between Nevsky Prospect and the Smolny Institute, so called because of the character of its soil (
BT
).

2
1
.
Jouvin gloves
: Xavier Jouvin (
1801–44
) of Grenoble, France, invented and patented the cutting die that enabled the mass production of close-fitting gloves.

2
2
.
Go after several hares . . . a single one
: Compare with the Russian (and English) folk saying, ‘If you run after two hares, you will catch neither,' which Luzhin characteristically mangles. His speech also makes ironic
allusion to famous passages in the Gospels: Jesus' commandment to ‘love thy neighbour as thyself' (Matthew
22
:
39
) and an exchange between John the Baptist and the crowds that come to be baptized by him: ‘And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise' (Luke
3
:
10–11
). Luzhin's argument resembles the teachings and style of the ‘rational egoists' and radical ‘social democrats' of the time, notably Chernyshevsky and Dmitry Pisarev (
1840–68
), as well as the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (
1748–1832
), whose ideas proved influential in
1860
s Russia, along with those of J. S. Mill (
1806–73
) (
BT
,
PSS
).

2
3
.
robbed . . . counterfeiting . . . murdered
: All these episodes relate to stories reported in the press in
1865
or to Dostoyevsky directly by word of mouth. The first episode refers to a student expelled from university, who, as Dostoyevsky wrote to his publisher Katkov, ‘decided to rob the mail and kill the postman'; such accounts helped convince him that the plot of his novel was ‘far from eccentric' (
BT
).

2
4
.
economic changes . . . when the great hour struck
: Apparent references to the social and economic consequences of the abolition of serfdom in
1861
, and in particular to the rapid impoverishment of educated but minor representatives of the nobility. The words of the ‘lecturer' echo the actual testimony, as reported by the
Moscow Gazette
, of his real-life prototype A. T. Neofitov, who claimed to have committed his crime ‘in order to provide for himself and his mother's family' – words echoed in turn by some of Dostoyevsky's comments on Raskolnikov in his notebooks and letters (
PSS
,
SB
).

2
5
.
a tavern . . . and princesses
: The notorious building in question, on the corner of Haymarket Square and Konnyi Lane, was known as the
Malinnik
(‘raspberry bushes'). The first two floors were for eating and drinking, while the third was given over to ‘thirteen haunts of the darkest, most appalling debauchery', as described by Vsevolod Krestovsky (
1840–95
), whose novel of St Petersburg low life,
Petersburg Slums
(
1864–6
), makes for an illuminating comparison with the depictions of prostitution and poverty in
Crime and Punishment
: ‘Each of these [thirteen] burrows contained within itself several more nooks, separated one from the other by thin wooden partitions [ . . . ] And in these burrows and little wooden cells there huddle between eighty and a hundred of the most pitiful, outcast creatures, who have surrendered themselves to the most ruinous depravity.' According to the historians N. B. Lebina and
M. V. Shkarovsky, ‘These women never charged more than fifty copecks for their services. On holidays, a prostitute at the
Malinnik
might see up to fifty men. The clothing worn by girls in these establishments was not just poor, it was indecently primitive. Sometimes it consisted merely of a dirty towel wrapped around the hips' (
BT
).

2
6
.
V—
—
y
: Voznesensky Prospect.

2
7
.
short little lane
: Tairov Lane, since renamed Brinko Lane.

2
8
.
one square yard . . . just live!
: A ‘contamination', Tikhomirov convincingly argues, of passages from Victor Hugo's novels
Notre-Dame de Paris
(
1831
, published in
Time
in
1862
) and
Le Dernier Jour d'un condamné
(see above, Part One, note
51
).

2
9
.
‘Crystal Palace'
: Referred to earlier by Razumikhin in French. In reality, there was no such tavern in St Petersburg at the time, in any language, though there was a hotel by that name, in the same part of town. More importantly, the name alludes to the Crystal Palace erected in Hyde Park at the Great Exhibition of
1851
. This had struck Dostoyevsky, during his visit to London in
1862
, as some kind of ‘biblical scene, like something about Babylon, some prophecy from Revelations taking shape before your eyes'. The Crystal Palace became a motif in Dostoyevsky's polemics with Chernyshevsky and the other socialist radicals of the time; the narrator of
Notes from Underground
(
1864
) saw in it the model of the rationalist utopia against which he felt compelled to rebel. In Tikhomirov's view: ‘The “Crystal Palace” of the Utopianist dreamers turns out, in
Crime and Punishment
, to be a third-rate tavern [ . . . ] which casts a dark shadow on the radiant image of the New Jerusalem, the route to which, according to Raskolnikov's theory, lies through blood and violence. It is relevant, in this connection, that in one of the drafts Raskolnikov was meant to set out his “idea” precisely there, in the “Crystal Palace”' (
BT
).

3
0
.
Aztecs – Izler
: The merchant Ivan Izler owned the suburban ‘Artificial Mineral Water Gardens' (or simply ‘Izler's Gardens'), which opened in the
1840
s. By the time Dostoyevsky visited in the
1860
s the Gardens had become very popular for their firework displays, theatre shows, giants, gypsies and other attractions. Izler tried to bring Massimo and Bartola, of Liliputian height and putatively Aztec origin, to the gardens, but failed; they were exhibited elsewhere (
BT
).